Archive for 2007 Bowman Chrome

YES! It’s finally here. I spent a pretty penny on this one, but it was worth it because now I have 3 out of the 7 parallels. Not that I’ll get all of them, but I love this product and I love the refractor parallels that go along with it. You don’t see these very often anymore on eBay either. I basically traded the value of my five Allen & Ginter silk cards for this one card. This takes over the refractor as my most centerpiece card of the collection now. I’m also up to 108 cards in the collection. The other base and refractor parallel are graded, but I think I’m going to keep this as is in a toploader. Here’s a look:

In my effort to acquire and put together a complete set of the parallels from 2007 Bowman Chrome, I took one step closer today with the acquisition of an Xfractor parallel. This one cost me a pretty penny, but it was still a tad cheaper than what they’ve sold for in the past on eBay. Again, I cannot emphasize enough of my appreciation of the refractor parallels in this product. This card puts me at exactly 100 cards in the collection and counting. I still have a couple eBay purchases coming in the next few days. I also didn’t receive anything today for the contest and there’s still plenty of prizes if you click the contest link on your right so keep those packages coming!

OMG, the 2007 Bowman Chrome Superfractor has been found and listed on eBay. I found the listing while scouring Tim Lincecum cards, especially from the 2007 Bowman Chrome set since I’ve been trying to get the rainbow parallels from that set. I know that the Bowman Chrome autograph has been found a while back, but I didn’t know if the regular base card had been found until now. I guess it’s been around since December of ’08 and this guy has been fielding offers for it since. With this economy, it’s probably difficult to find a buyer at the price that he wants. I wonder what the highest bid for it is. I think if it was like $200, I would definitely buy it, but that is but a dream. I’m not sure if I would prefer this card over his autograph gold parallel card that sold for over $500 back in December. What would you pay for this card?

In Part I of this two part series, I took a look at whether a player’s (in this case, Tim Lincecum’s) signature changes over the course of his career. Even after just two years in Tim’s career, the answer is yes, with the most glaring difference seen between signatures from 2006 and those after 2006. Now I want to ask the question of whether a player’s signature quality decreases over the course of signing hundreds of cards within one set. The most obvious cause for this is tiring of the hand and laziness (desire to finish and get it over with). Do you ever wonder why some people desire low numbered cards in a set with a high serial number? I know I do. Maybe the reason is that the signature in the lower numbers is of higher quality than that of higher numbers.

I assessed this by looking at an autograph set with a high number of signatures, but they also had to be sequentially numbered. The analysis is based on the assumption that he signed the cards in numerical order according to the serial number from lowest to highest (or that he signed a bunch of cards and then the company serially numbered the cards from the first ones to the last ones). I picked 2007 Bowman Chrome as the product and I chose the refractor parallels as the type to analyze. This is the easiest because they are all numbered out of 500, which gives me a big number to work with and plenty of examples to find off eBay. Unlike some cards, these are also serially numbered out of 500 so it is easy to put the cards in numerical order once I’ve found them. Let’s take a look at the exhibit:

As you can tell by just casual observation, the quality definitely goes down. This is seen by comparing cards relatively to one another. You can see at those cards under 250 that there is some semblance of letters other than “T” and “L,” but appear messy. Some look like complete crap such as card 342/500. In fact, none of these signatures look all that great, but you can slightly make the argument that he put a little more effort into the lower numbered ones than the ones that are reaching the 400s. He probably used all his effort and energy to sign those blue, gold, orange, and red cards. I even included my own serial numbered refractor in this set for comparison. See if you can find it. Give up? It’s card 433/500. What the hell happened to the “L” you ask? He probably sneezed, was in the middle of a mini earthquake or was battling some evil Dodgers or something.

So I conclude that a player’s signature quality does decrease over a period of signing hundreds of cards, which would make lower numbered cards more valuable and desired. As for owning a perfect Lincecum autograph, I think I have still yet to find one.

Remember a couple posts back, I talked about the 2007 Bowman Chrome autograph card and how it was the centerpiece of my collection? Remember how I said it could easily be replaced if I found a card that was one step up in terms of parallel-ness? I found this on eBay today, and from the looks of it, it is in very good condition. You rarely see these up for auction and when you do, they normally go for an exorbitant amount of money. I would estimate that a card of this stature could easily sell anywhere from $400-600. Since it’s Christmas time, it might sell in the higher range. Right now, it’s only $246, but there’s still 10 hours left. I actually put in a bid of $250, but that will probably be outbid by the time I wake up. It’s fun to at least have a hand in this, although I’m not sure I would pay for it if I did win. I would probably have to sell off a bunch of cards to help pay for it and also borrow some PayPal money. Blue refractor parallel versions easily sell for over $300. If I could, I would easily give up my regular refractor for this gold one. I read Gellman’s post a few days ago about trading in your other cards and selling them to upgrade to a nicer one that you like. I’ve never thought about that only because I want to collect every single card ever made for that given player and selling two or three cards to obtain one card would be counter-productive; however, I would make an exception in this case. Here’s a nice look at this rare beauty:

This topic is an easy one as my favorite card in my collection is this one:

This is a 2007 Bowman Chrome Refractor numbered out of 500 card. It’s the first card that I got to start the Tim Lincecum collection and also the one that got me back into the hobby. It began by me following him as a player. I noticed that he was blowing out the hitters in the minors and thought it would be wise to pick up a card of his and just follow his path and career through the majors. What started as a small interest has ballooned to a quest to find every card of his. I bought this card off eBay for $90 shipping included, which is a steal now. I became paranoid that it was only in a penny sleeve and toploader so I decided to make a trip to PSA headquarters to have this card encased. I was going to be in the area anyway so I dropped it off to be graded along with a couple baseballs. It was not my intention to grade it to increase the value, but really to preserve it in a more protective case. When the grading returned to me, I was shocked to find that it was given a Gem Mint 10, which is the highest for PSA. Now I know that Gellman has these rules for grading cards and I think this card and its grading accidentally falls into all those categories. I’m not a fan of grading just any card either, but I think I was pretty lucky to have this one done. By looking at similar items and past sales, the last time I checked, I think a Refractor numbered out of 500 that was a PSA 10 sold for around $350. Not bad for picking this up for $90. I think grading cost like $20 or something so it has definitely appreciated in value. It doesn’t hurt that Tim also won the Cy Young this year. I have went back and forth on selling my entire collection in recent months, but I have thus far convinced myself not to. I’m not sure if I would ever sell this piece. If I do sell it, then I woudl sell everything else off as well. That would also mean the end of the hobby for me.

I think with player collections, it’s always about obtaining more of the player and trying to get every card that’s ever made. However, I would jump at the chance to buy the same exact card if I saw it for the right price. But I also believe that with every player or team collection, there is one card that defines the collection. For me, it’s this one because it’s his first autographed rookie card and comes from Bowman. The only card that’s better than this one would be the next parallel up, which is the X-fractor numbered out of 250. From there, it’s the blue parallel refractor numbered out of 150, etc.

As for attaching memories or sentiment to certain pieces, I don’t think I do in this case. I would not be sentimental about a card that I bought. On the contrary, I would have more sentiment in a piece in which I got the autograph in person or if I opened a box and got a hit of a lifetime. Otherwise, buying a card off eBay does not really create any special memories for me.

1/1’s have flooded the market and I’m pretty sick of them now. Unless they are unbelievably good looking such as the superfractor, 1/1s don’t really mean much to me. Any card that’s serial numbered could technically be a 1/1 because there’s only one of that number in the series. The thing that made me dismiss chasing 1/1s was the printing plate. These are supposed to be 1/1s, but there are acutally more due to different color plates along with different parallel versions. In addition, they aren’t even very good looking. I just see them as gimmicks and I would gladly take an actual card over a printing plate.